


All The Loose Threads

by not_poignant



Series: The Golden Age [2]
Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alois 'clear communication is for idiots' Flitmouse, Angst, Anton 'I am being a clear communicator' the Brave, Communication, Flirting, Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, Kink Shaming, M/M, Past Domestic Abuse, Past Domestic Violence, Politics, Polyamory, Slut Shaming, and lack of communication, oh yeah and they'll have sex at some point, other characters too I haven't figured it out yet, profound self esteem issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 13:19:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14874485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/not_poignant/pseuds/not_poignant
Summary: Flitmouse, principal tailor for the Palace of Lune, has no interest in being yet another one of Anton's faceless, meaningless conquests. Anton, Golden Warrior and beloved brave hero of the nation, has no interest in being dismissed just because he enjoys having sex.





	All The Loose Threads

**Author's Note:**

> (Set prior to the events of _The Golden Age that Never Was_ )
> 
> WELP

Flitmouse brewed tea. He liked the ritual of it. Measuring loose leaves into the strainer, resting over a single cup because he was not making a pot for multiple people, standing alone in his loft. He waited until the water was the perfect temperature in the kettle, then poured it over the leaves slowly so as not to burn them. He watched the water stain a slight sepia, and thought it was an unfortunate colour for the sartorial, but was correct for the brew. Then, he turned the hourglass, set the tiny spoon on the saucer, turned his back to the cup and leaned against the bench.

It was eleven in the evening and he’d arrived home half an hour before. So an early night.

Sometimes he slept in the Palace, though he hated to. He hated to see the murals on the walls, depicting a more true, golden age. He loathed not knowing who he could trust. There was almost no one. Lady Tooth had told him that he could trust a handful of people, and those were not people he saw very often. The Royal Admiral was rude and Flitmouse didn’t trust him anyway. The Captain of the Fleet was cool around him, though she sometimes asked him if he still tended to Agnessa’s clothing. A code. Are you safe? Can you be trusted?

It didn’t matter. They weren’t friends.

He didn’t really do that anyway. _Friends._

He turned when he knew the hourglass was finishing. He didn’t know why he used it anymore, when he could count the minutes off smoothly in his head. With expert fingers he pushed it aside, drew out the strainer and left it by the corner of the sink, then curled his fingers around the delicate cup. It was too warm.

But he didn’t draw his fingers away.

*

The first time he met Anton the Brave, properly met him in person and not just via glimpsing him in a Parade or down a corridor or on a poster, he lost one of his best fellow tailors.

He’d walked into the fabric room in the Palace and saw Karlos pressed up against the wall, his pants down to his ankles and Anton behind him, rutting into him with one hand on the back of his neck and the other around Karlos’ hips, pulling him back.

‘You like that?’ Anton breathed, dragging his teeth across Karlos’ neck. ‘It’s good, isn’t it?’

Karlos made some tortured noise that did, in fact, make it sound like it was good.

But the pose reminded Flitmouse of Vadim so fast, he too spilled a tortured sound.

They turned to look at him even as Flitmouse took two small steps back, his eyes narrowing. How dare they? In his place of business!

‘Tailor Flitmouse!’ Karlos said, horrified.

‘You’re dismissed,’ Flitmouse said. ‘Not for the day, for _life._ I don’t want to see you in this Palace again.’

Anton pulled back, pulled _out,_ and Flitmouse saw all of it and his cheeks burned. Scandalised, he turned away, and then unable to help himself, he walked briskly from the room and closed the door and wished he hadn’t seen it at all.

He heard footsteps in the room behind him, approaching fast.

Pushing his glasses up his nose, he fled, and thankfully had a corner to turn down quickly and corridors to disappear into, because he didn’t want to know who was following him and he didn’t want to explain his decision. It was entirely appropriate of him. He was right to fire Karlos. So Lady Tooth had Anton the Brave on her list of trusted people? Well.

Perhaps he could be trusted to be an enemy of the Tsar, but he obviously couldn’t be trusted in any _other_ way.

*

The second time he met Anton, the slut showed up on his doorstep with a canister of tea. Flitmouse stared at it, then up at those impossible golden eyes and glared. How old was Anton anyway? Not some nineteen year old. At least two hundred? Old enough to know better. Flitmouse reached out and sharply knocked the tea from Anton’s hands. It fell before Anton could catch it, and then it rolled off the rickety staircase that led up to the attic and crashed upon the cobblestone alley street below, where the lid popped off and good quality leaves spilled everywhere.

‘Ah, shit,’ Anton said.

‘Leave.’

‘I’m here to apologise.’

‘No, I will not give Karlos his job back, and I am not interested in any of your apologies. If you ever, _ever_ use the fabric room for your exploits again, I will find a way to cut your dick off, do you understand?’

Anton stared at him, shocked. Flitmouse stared back, thinking of the tiny scissors he always had in his pocket and how he’d defend himself if he had to. He _would._ But as he looked up at that gaze which was on so many posters, he damned himself for finding Anton very nice to look at. It just wasn’t _fair._ Why did the nice ones always have to be so awful? Why them?

‘Slut,’ Flitmouse said for good measure.

Anton didn’t seem offended at all, but his eyes narrowed like he was really _seeing_ Flitmouse, and Flitmouse didn’t like it.

He slammed his door closed.

Or he would have, if Anton’s boot hadn’t wedged between it and the doorframe.

‘Hear me out,’ Anton said.

‘No,’ Flitmouse hissed, drawing the door back and slamming it against the boot four times before he realised that Anton just wasn’t going to move it. ‘Leave!’

‘I am terribly sorry. Please don’t take it out on Karlos. It was all my doing, I promise you.’

‘Oh I _bet,’_ Flitmouse hissed. ‘But nevertheless, it’s hard for you to fuck him if he’s not there to fuck. Find something else to stick it into. A glory hole for all I care.’

‘By the Light, do you have to be so _difficult?’_

Vadim had said that to him too, all the time. Did Flitmouse have to be so difficult? And sensitive? And impossible to please? Why wouldn’t he just _listen?_ Why wouldn’t he just _obey?_

 _‘Yes!’_ Flitmouse shouted. ‘I _do!’_

Flitmouse raised his own shoe and stomped it down in Anton’s boot as hard as he could. In shock, Anton drew his foot back, swearing, and Flitmouse closed the door and then locked it, then barred it, then stood there shaking while Anton knocked on it and apologised. He refused to turn around and see the monstrous couch in his room, hidden behind fabric as it was. He hated that Vadim had known that Flitmouse couldn’t get that couch out without a _lot_ of help, and Vadim had also known that Flitmouse would never have enough friends to help him with something like that. And he certainly didn’t have the money to hire someone.

Eventually, Anton left, and Flitmouse sat numbly at his table and rubbed at the goose bumps on his arm until they faded.

*

The third time he met Anton, he was sitting on his own working on the final touches of a new uniform. The others had left, it was two in the morning, he was prepared to sleep in the Palace. No rest for the wicked and oh, at least it fuelled his hatred of the whole system. They didn’t pay him for this. No. That was just expected of him, because he was a lowly servant. Best tailor on the _planet,_ and he couldn’t afford to get that couch out of his attic.

A knock and Anton entered, and Flitmouse raised his needle threateningly when he saw who it was.

‘I will stab you,’ Flitmouse said.

‘Yes,’ Anton said, laughing ruefully. ‘I did gather that. I’m sorry for coming to your home. I didn’t even think- I just wanted to help Karlos and I didn’t think how much of an invasion of privacy that was for you. No wonder you were so offended.’

Flitmouse narrowed his eyes down at the button he was stitching in and said nothing at all. Anton’s statement, that wasn’t what he expected. So Flitmouse wondered what game Anton was playing and wondered if he knew at all how to play it. He didn’t want to.

‘You used to date Vadim, didn’t you?’ Anton said.

Flitmouse fumbled the needle, and it fell onto the button with the tiniest clink.

‘Are you going to tell me how much of a hero he was before he died?’ Flitmouse said silkily. ‘Because I can assure you, he deserved it.’

Things Lady Tooth had said to him while she handed him tissue after tissue as he bawled his eyes out in her tower while _still_ sporting the bruises Vadim had left all over him even though Vadim had just died while on a mission. Flitmouse knew how to say the right words _now_ , but only after she’d fed them to him. Only after she’d given him hot chocolate and told him that he shouldn’t settle for people like that and that she was happy he was dead too, which had shocked him into tears all over again.

‘No,’ Anton said, his voice strained. ‘I wasn’t going to say that.’

‘Look, you’re really very pretty, I could look at you all day.’ Flitmouse had hardly looked at him at all, but it didn’t matter. Anton was a _pervert._ Even Vadim had liked relatively normal sex, and wasn’t interested in dungeons and pain and all that other awfulness. Vadim had only liked pain the rest of the time. ‘But every time you open your mouth around me, it’s somewhat terrible. So why don’t you just go?’

‘I could look at me all day too,’ Anton said easily. ‘I might go do that in a second. You’re very pretty too, you know.’

 _‘No,’_ Flitmouse said, glaring up at him. ‘What, you lost Karlos, so now you want someone else? There are _hundreds_ of people here. Have you run out?’

‘Maybe I have,’ Anton said, shrugging and grinning like a fool. Flitmouse stared at him, and momentarily didn’t know what to say.

‘You can’t be flirting with me,’ Flitmouse said.

‘Not yet,’ Anton said. ‘Actually I just…sort of wanted to chat with you. You’re a friend of Tooth’s right?’

‘Yes, yes, all of that, and you’re a friend of hers too and so on, oh, we’re such good friends now, look at us, like bosom buddies.’ Flitmouse picked up his needle. ‘Leave.’

‘Do you have a first name?’

‘No. Leave.’

‘My last name is ‘the Brave.’ You know? Anton the Brave? Because I am extremely courageous, even in the face of very angry men.’

Flitmouse was looking down, so he was almost certain that Anton didn’t see the tiny smile that helplessly quirked. He managed to make it go away seconds later, but it had happened nonetheless. Something inside of him thawed.

‘You are a sexual deviant,’ Flitmouse said, looking up and stitching without looking at the button. ‘You are promiscuous, and you are egregiously offensive when it comes to respecting the property of others. I am none of those things. If you need to get laid, I’m not your man.’

‘It’s kind of refreshing, actually,’ Anton said. ‘I mean the insults, not so much. But I don’t have many friends I haven’t fucked at some point.’

‘We’re not _friends!’_ Flitmouse said, staring at him.

‘Well… I suppose that’s true, too. What sorts of things do you like to do with friends? Is there some clandestine group I can join where we all talk about overthrowing the Tsar? Oh, but I’m _in_ that one! I could turn up on your doorstep and bring you tea, but I tried that. You’re so cruel to tea. You… _tea murderer.’_

‘I’m sure the tea was _extremely_ trashy, so it deserved what it got,’ Flitmouse said, arching a brow.

‘Oh, no, was it? I spent so much on it too,’ Anton said. ‘But I’ll take your word for it. Trashy tea- No, wait, don’t say it, delivered by a trashy man, right? I could touch the best tea in the land and you wouldn’t have any, would you?’

‘Correct.’

‘I like you.’

‘I have _work_ to do,’ Flitmouse said, gesturing around him. ‘Actual work. That will keep me up until dawn, at which point I will need to start working again. Unlike you, who just seems to want to be a pain in my ass. _Don’t-_ Don’t make a joke about that.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Anton said. ‘Could I help you?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Could I help you with the work? I can sew, you know. Or I can cut things. My mother actually used to be very good at these sorts of things. She was a seamstress in the Palace. Long time ago now. Mathilda?’

Flitmouse swallowed and hesitated, absently brushing non-existent dust off the button.

 _‘The_ Mathilda?’ he said.

‘I don’t know about that. She was just my mother. But anyway, I can help.’

Flitmouse pointed over to a bolt of fabric. ‘Cut twenty squares, fifteen by fifteen, make no mistakes, and I’ll see if you can _help.’_

‘Aye-aye, captain!’ Anton said, raising his hand to his forehead in a salute, before sitting down and getting started.

Flitmouse watched surreptitiously as Anton commandeered a measuring tape, cloth scissors and more. He didn’t ask where things were kept and he obviously knew the difference between heavy cloth scissors and the other twenty kinds they kept around the place. He did everything diligently, without any more inane conversation. Then, he began cutting squares with a nice, neat edge. They weren’t exactly flawless, but they were what he could expect from his team of seamstresses. The only one in the Palace who produced flawless work was Flitmouse.

‘I’m surprised you’re not a tailor,’ Flitmouse said to the sleeve he checked the stitching on, nipping off tiny bits of stray fabric with his small thread scissors.

‘I wanted to be a Golden Warrior from the beginning,’ Anton said, quieter now that he was concentrating on what he was doing. ‘You know, have the sword, defeat the Darkness, all of that. I was very big into the rhetoric. Still am, actually.’

‘Despite everything,’ Flitmouse said.

‘Despite everything,’ Anton agreed. ‘And you? Always wanted to be a tailor? Never a soldier?’

‘Peasants don’t become soldiers,’ Flitmouse said automatically. It wasn’t entirely true, but it was mostly true. And the peasants that became soldiers generally didn’t advance or get very far, and often got sidelined into training those at the Barracks, or doing other work that kept them off ships. ‘My father had a talent for it. I needed something to do. I liked…buying the cloth from the marketplace. Running my hands along it, checking its warp and weft, the weight.’

He smiled a little to himself, and then felt uncomfortable as the silence grew in the room. He looked up to see Anton watching him, and felt prickly and strange.

‘What?’ Flitmouse said sharply.

‘My mother used to like that too,’ Anton said, though Flitmouse thought he might have been about to say something different. ‘She kept so many offcuts. There was always spare fabric in the house.’

Flitmouse thought to the interior of his home, where excess offcuts and bolts of fabric were stored, and couldn’t tell if he was annoyed at the similarity, or charmed by it. Anton had never seen the interior. Flitmouse hadn’t given him a chance.

‘Did you really get expensive tea?’ Flitmouse said, listening to the sharp sound of heavy scissors cutting methodically through heavy fabric.

‘Yes. I mean I don’t really like it, but-’

‘You don’t _like_ tea?’ Flitmouse said, looking up and glaring.

‘People don’t like tea sometimes,’ Anton said, a mock scolding tone in his voice. ‘That happens.’

‘Not civilised people,’ Flitmouse said.

‘Oh, no, Flitmouse, when did I ever give you the impression I was _civilised?’_ Anton started laughing. ‘I’m so sorry. I never meant _that_ to be something you’d take away from meeting me.’

‘No, I- I _didn’t_ think…’ Flitmouse ground to a sputtering halt and Anton was still laughing. ‘You are utterly infuriating.’

‘That’s better,’ Anton said. ‘Annoying, infuriating, but handsome. As long as you remember to put handsome in there somewhere? I’m happy.’

‘Then you shall never be called handsome,’ Flitmouse said. ‘I don’t _want_ you to be happy.’

‘Without a doubt, you are one of the sharpest men I’ve ever met.’

‘Good,’ Flitmouse said, and then watched as Anton finished up with the squares.

‘So what do you want me to do with these?’ Anton said. ‘Am I hemming them off? Something else?’

‘Oh no, they’re…for nothing really. I just wanted to see if you were competent. I wasn’t going to trust you on anything meaningful.’

Anton looked down at the squares and then set them on the table, shifting them until all the corners met and they were flush. Flitmouse expected him to be angry now, to rage, it’s what Vadim would have done and he was ready for it. But instead, Anton just placed down the cloth scissors and nodded as though to himself.

‘It does make sense,’ Anton said equably. ‘Especially since you’re known for your high standards.’

Flitmouse felt like nothing was going the way it was supposed to go. Anton was a Golden Warrior, like Vadim, _worse_ than Vadim. Wasn’t he? They all lived forever and no longer had to care about anyone with a lifespan affected by old age. Vadim often blamed his ‘accidents’ on the fact that he forgot that Flitmouse was more fragile, more sensitive. Flitmouse forever being reminded that he wasn’t one of them, and that he deserved to be hurt because of it. Like _he_ was ever going to go into a stupid propaganda mountain to become a _stupid_ propaganda Warrior.

Like Anton.

‘Well, I can leave now if you like,’ Anton said. ‘I only wanted to apologise. Though truly, if I can help, and my skills aren’t too rusty, I could do anything at all.’

Flitmouse placed his index finger on the bridge of his glasses, pushing them up, and then looked around the room considering. The truth was he did have far too much to do. They always set him with impossible tasks and every time Flitmouse hurt himself in the process of achieving them, they began to believe that was normal, and set even more impossible tasks. One day he’d have to tell the Head Housekeeper that he just couldn’t fulfil unreasonable demands, and on that day, he’d likely be fired. Toothiana would be furious.

So he had to fulfil their demands.

‘There are some patterns for shirts,’ Flitmouse said, pointing at some blueprints. ‘I need- _Surely_ you have something better you can be doing? Fucking anything that moves? Finding a cake and sticking your prick in it?’

Anton watched Flitmouse soberly, and Flitmouse felt uneasy. It was fair game wasn’t it? Flitmouse could talk like that because Anton _was_ a slut and he was so obviously _proud_ of it. He needed someone who would bring him down a peg or two! It wasn’t like Flitmouse had to be nice to him. All Anton had done was incur on his private spaces, lose him a tailor and be a general nightmare.

‘I understand you’re upset,’ Anton said finally, patiently, like he was explaining something to someone younger. Vadim had done that too, and Flitmouse was about ready to gut him. ‘But I’ve made it clear that I’m happy to leave. If you want me to go, you can tell me to go. If you want me to help, you can tell me to help. You don’t have to attenuate all your statements with insults.’

‘As if you can be insulted,’ Flitmouse spat. It wasn’t what Vadim would say, but Flitmouse still rankled at being lectured to. The _lecturing_ itself was familiar.

‘Well, I’m a person, aren’t I?’

‘Are you? You’re a _Golden Warrior._ Basically gods at this point.’

Anton’s eyes widened in disbelief, then he laughed. Flitmouse bristled to be laughed at, but Anton didn’t seem to be doing it meanly. Eventually, Anton just sighed.

‘We still die,’ Anton said. ‘And bleed. And fuck. And have emotions. Now, do you want me to leave or not?’

Flitmouse didn’t know what to say for a moment. He wasn’t used to people speaking to him so openly unless they were giving him a tailoring order, and even then, some of his clients required him to practically divine what they were asking, as though he was even more of a miracle worker than he actually was. The rest of the time people spoke in double talk, or innuendo, or asides, or if they were Vadim, they just expected Flitmouse to _know_ what they were thinking.

So did he want Anton to leave or not?

Flitmouse suspected there was probably a right answer to the question, and he hated being put on the spot. He wanted to look away and gather his thoughts, say something perfect, but Anton was just sitting there gazing at him with those impossibly golden eyes. It was too much.

‘Leave,’ Flitmouse said, shocked at himself for being so blunt. ‘That is to say, I- I mean-’

‘No, no, I understand,’ Anton said, smiling as though he wasn’t at all offended, which made no sense. Flitmouse looked at him and wondered if his face betrayed his desperation to understand why this entire meeting hadn’t gone the way he thought it would.

‘You’re not angry?’ Flitmouse said.

He heard the way he spoke, _hated_ himself for it. He didn’t show his vulnerabilities like that! He knew better. He tucked away that hiccup, so furious that he nearly missed Anton’s cheerful response.

‘Not at all! Why would I be angry, Flitmouse? Goodness, I imposed on _you_ after all. Still, it is rather peaceful here. May I come find you again some time? If I bring some tea, will you throw it to the four winds?’

Flitmouse refused to smile, and instead he just squinted. ‘I might.’

‘I suspected as much,’ Anton said winking. ‘Still, what do you say? Can I visit?’

‘Surely you have better things to do with your time.’

‘This is a better thing to do with my time,’ Anton said, unbothered. ‘And you haven’t answered my question. One would think you didn’t like them. Questions.’

Anton’s cheerfulness was still there, but there was something in the way he looked at Flitmouse that made him feel raw. It was unbearable. Wasn’t Anton supposed to be gone by now? He tried to think of how to answer the question. Would he mind if Anton visited again? Had it truly been so terrible?

He looked over to the evenly cut squares.

‘I expect you to work if you do,’ Flitmouse said coldly. ‘We don’t all get _free time_ in which to do whatever we like.’

‘Of course,’ Anton said. ‘I’m going to take that as a yes. Well, good evening. Thank you for the company.’

He sketched a shallow bow, and then walked out, leaving Flitmouse sitting there staring blankly at the door. He couldn’t tell if he was being set up for an elaborate joke, or if Anton really was just that execrably sincere.


End file.
